But it’s easy to forget that just a few short years ago, Warner Brothers attempted to rush a ‘Justice League’ movie into theaters in response to the success Marvel was experiencing in theaters, entitled ‘Justice League: Mortal’. Warner Brothers were so desperate that they were going to make it half live-action and half CGI just to get it out there ASAP. Fortunately or unfortunately, the project fell apart. But the script has just surfaced revealing what might have been.

The story is very heavily based on ‘Infinite Crisis’ the infamous comic story that featured Wonder Woman slaying Maxwell Lord, the one time benefactor of the Justice League, turned telepathic villain. (He convinced Superman that Wonder Woman was Doomsday… and that she’d murdered Lois Lane.) It also established that paranoid Batman created Brother Eye in order to spy on his super powered cohorts.

However, the movie actually centers on Barry Allen, The Flash. If you would like, you can read the entire script below:

According to this script, we would have witnessed Barry Allen’s sacrifice and Wally West’s assumption of the role of The Flash a la ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths.” Barry Allen would have been played by Adam Brody, while Wally West would have been played by Anton Yelchin. (So, like Barry and Wally would be the same age?)

In addition to ‘Infinite Crisis’, the movie would have borrowed from the ‘Justice League’ cartoon which was still on the air at the time. Rapper Common was cast as John Stewart, the most visible Green Lantern at that time. The cast would have also included D.J. Cotrona (‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’) as Superman, Armie Hammer (‘The Lone Ranger,’ ‘Mirror Mirror’) as Batman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Hugh Keays-Byrne as Martian Manhunter and Jay Baruchel (‘Robocop,’ ‘This is the End’) as Maxwell Lord . (This was before it was established that Cyborg was a founding JL member.) In addition, the film was also to feature other characters from the comics. Also cast were Teresa Palmer as Talia Al Ghul, Zoe Kazan as Iris West and Stephen Tobolowsky as Alfred Pennyworth.

Er… maybe it was best that this project bit the dust. I don’t have all the confidence in the world with Warner Brothers’ current plans, but I’m sort of glad this movie never got made, especially since it was supposed to be half live-action half CGI like ‘Beowolf’. Since then, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman have been cut and the JL film will focus on Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and The Flash.

What do you think? Is it better that Warner Brothers waited to launch a Justice League project? Would you have liked to have seen a movie based on ‘Final Crisis’?